“There is the statement,” said Carver. “Not a line must be used; only
the fact that the statement has been made can be published. What do you
think of it?”
“It reads fairly honest to me,” said Tab, and the inspector nodded.
“It does to me also. I never had the slightest doubt in my mind that
Walters, or Felling, was innocent. The references to Miss Ardfern’s
visits are a little obscure, and in one sense rather remarkable,
particularly the old man’s reference to the pin.”
“You are thinking of the pin we found in the corridor?” said Tab
quickly.
Carver laughed softly.
“I was and I wasn’t,” he said. “The pin of which the old man spoke was
obviously one of the jewels which were in the box, and as obviously he
was taking an inventory of the jewel-case to see that everything was
there.”
Tab was silent for a while.
“You mean that the jewels really belonged to Trasmere, that he loaned
them to the girl and that she had to return them every night?” he asked
quietly.
“There is no other explanation,” said Carver. “There is no other
explanation, either, for her secretarial activities. Trasmere was in
a score of enterprises and I have no doubt that he was the man who
put up the money for Ursula Ardfern’s season. He was a shrewd old boy
and probably had seen her acting. My own impression is that he made a
fortune out of this girl--”
“But why should she, a successful actress, consent to act as his
midnight secretary? Why should she go on as though she were a slave to
this man, instead of being, if your theory is correct, an earner of big
money?”
Carver looked at him steadily.
“Because he knew something about Miss Ardfern, something that she did
not wish should be known,” he said gently. “I am not suggesting it is
anything discreditable to her,” he went on discreetly, detecting the
cloud gathering on Tab’s face. “Some day she’ll tell us all about it I
daresay. At present, it is unimportant.”
He got up from his desk--they were talking in his office--and stretched
himself.
“This concludes the day’s entertainment, gentlemen,” he said, “and if
you are dissatisfied, your money will be returned to you at the doors.”
There were moments when Carver could be facetious.
“No, I’m not going home. I have a couple of hours’ work here. I shan’t
be disturbed. Happily the station telephone is out of order. A tree
fell across a line somewhere between here and the exchange. Remember,
Tab, only the briefest notes of Walters’ arrest. Nothing about the
charge, not a single item of his statement, beyond the fact that he has
made one.”
Happily Jacques had gone home, or the news editor would have exploded
at the meagre details with which Tab supplied his newspaper that night.
He reached home at half-past eleven with a queer little ache at his
heart. What was Ursula Ardfern’s secret? Why the mystery? Why must her
mystery be interwoven with the greater and the more sordid mystery of
the old man’s death?
As he pushed open the door he saw a telegram in the box which was
common to the whole of the flats, once the entrance door was closed.
It was for him and he tore open the envelope and unfolded its flimsy
contents. It was handed in at Naples and was from Rex.
“Going on to Egypt. Quite recovered. Shall be back in a month.”
He smiled to himself and hoped that “quite recovered” referred to
his youthful infatuation as well as his disordered nerves. He paused
outside the door of his flat to find his key and as he did so, he
thought he heard a sound. It may have come from one of the flats above,
but he did not give it any importance, and inserting the key, he caught
a momentary flash of light through the transom of his sitting-room.
It was as if at the second he had opened the door the lights in the
sitting-room had been extinguished.
It must have been an optical delusion, he thought, but the memory of
the burglar came to him as he closed the door slowly behind him. For
a second he hesitated, and then pushed open the closed door of the
sitting-room. The first thing he noticed was that all the blinds were
down, and he had left them up. He heard the sound of heavy breathing.
“Who’s there?” he asked and then reached out his hand for the switch.
Before his fingers could close upon the lever something struck him. He
felt no pain, was conscious only of a terrific shock that brought him
to his knees, incapable of thought or movement. Somebody pushed past
him in the darkness. There was a slam of the flat door, a quick patter
of feet on the stairs, and the street-door slammed.
Still Tab remained on his hands and knees, held there by his own
invincible will. There was a trickle of warm blood running over his
forehead and into the corner of his eye and the subsequent smart of it
brought him at last to his senses. He got unsteadily to his feet and
put on the lights.
It was a chair that had struck him; it lay overturned near the door.
Tab felt gingerly at his forehead and then went in search of a mirror.
The injury was a very slight one, the wound being superficial. He
guessed that the chair must have caught against the wall and eased the
blow, for one of the legs was broken and there was a long scratch on
the wall. Mechanically he bathed his face, put a rough dressing on his
forehead and then went back to the sitting-room to get a better idea of
the confusion which reigned there, than he had been able to appreciate
at first. Every drawer in his desk had been emptied. One which he kept
locked and which contained his more private papers, had been forcibly
broken open and the contents were scattered, some on the floor, a few
on the desk. A little bureau by the wall had been treated with the same
lack of courtesy and the floor was littered with its contents.
He found the same in his bedroom; every drawer rummaged except his
wardrobe, every box opened.
In Rex’s room the only thing that had been touched was the second
trunk that the burglar had left on his previous visit. This was on the
bed, opened, and its contents had been thrown around in confusion.
Tab’s gold watch and chain, which he had inadvertently left behind, was
untouched. His cash-box had been wrenched open, but though the money
had been emptied out, not a cent had been taken. Then he made a curious
discovery. In one of the drawers of his desk he had a portfolio of
photographs of himself which had been made a year before at the request
of his many maiden-aunts. This had been removed and every photograph
torn into four pieces. He found the debris with the other papers. It
was the only wanton damage that the burglar had done. For what had he
been searching? Tab puzzled his brains to remember the possession of
something which might interest an outsider. What did Rex own that was
worth all the trouble that this unknown visitor had taken?
He got on to the telephone and tried to reach Carver, and then
remembered Carver had told him the station ’phone was out of order.
On the stroke of midnight Inspector Carver was tidying his desk,
preparatory to leaving, when a dishevelled and damaged Tab made his
appearance.
“Hullo,” said Carver, “been fighting?”
“The other fellow did the fighting,” said Tab. “Carver, I am going to
sue the man who supplied us with our furniture. He said that the chairs
were mahogany and they are only pine.”
“Sit down,” commanded the detective. “You seem to be a little out of
your mind,” and then quickly, “you haven’t had another visit from your
burglar?”
Tab nodded.
“And what is more, I found him at home,” he said grimly, and related
all that had happened in the flat.
“I’ll come along and see the damage, though I don’t think it will help
us much,” said Carver slowly. “So he tore up your photographs, did he?
That is rather interesting.”
“I guess he didn’t like me,” said Tab. “I have been trying to remember
all the crooks I have annoyed, Carver. It can’t be young Harry Bolton,
because he must be still in prison and it can’t be Lew Sorki because,
if I remember rightly, he got religion in prison and he is now
conducting a mission to the submerged. They are the only two people who
expressed their intention of cutting short my young life.”
“It is neither of these.” Carver was emphatic on this point. “Tell me
again, Tab, from the moment you opened the door to the moment you lost
interest in the proceedings, just what happened. First, did you close
the flat door behind you?”
“Yes,” said Tab surprised.
“And then you went into the sitting-room and he caught you a whack with
the chair? There were no lights?”
“None whatever.”
“No light on the landing outside the flat door?” asked Carver eagerly.
“None.”
“And he just rushed past you and was gone. You remember that very
well, I suppose, although you were knocked out?”
“I remember his going and hearing the door slam,” said Tab wondering.
Carver was making notes on his blotting pad in that strange system of
shorthand which nobody understood but Carver.
“Now Tab, think very carefully before you reply, was there anything in
Lander’s box, any reference to his uncle, any document respecting his
uncle, anything, indeed, that had to do, even remotely, with Trasmere,
in that box of Lander’s? Because I am perfectly certain that there was
the objective and that the search of your room was an after-thought. In
fact, it is proved by the circumstances of the thief in your room when
you arrived--he had evidently left that search to the last.”
Tab concentrated his mind upon Rex and all Rex’s belongings.
“No,” he confessed. “I can’t remember anything.”
Carver nodded.
“Very good,” he said rising, “and now we’ll go along and look at this
trouble of yours. When did it happen?”
“About half-an-hour ago; maybe a little more,” he looked up at the
clock, “yes, it was nearer an hour ago. I tried to get you on the
’phone--”
“The machine is out of order, it always is out of order,” said the
fatalistic Carver, “when there is real trouble around. In fact, if I
obeyed my impulse, I should double the men on duty every time that
’phone falls down.”
They were in front of the station, and the cab that Carver had called
was pulling up to the curb when another cab came dashing toward them,
swerved to the side-walk and stopped dead. Out of the cab’s interior
tumbled a man who was sketchily attired, and whose pyjama coat showed
where his shirt should have been. Mr. Stott had arrayed himself
hurriedly and for once in his life, was careless of appearance.
He fell almost into Carver’s arms and his mouth opened and closed like
a fish out of water. When he did speak his voice was a squeak.
“They’re at it again! They’re at it again!” he piped.